Note 12 — THE POETRY OF YONE NOGUCHI
Reading edition
When I wrote this article I was still hypnotised, like the symbolists themselves, with the idea that symbolism was a method. My later article on kinetic and potential speech contains what I believe to be a more accurate account of the significance of what is called the “symbolist movement.” It did not turn a practice into a theory, but merely emphasized one of the two inseparable functions of words when combined in poetic speech, and emphasized it at the expense of the other.
Japanese poets have always insisted on the potential element in poetic speech. Its intensity has always been for them the test of a poem. Noguchi, except in that he is a Japanese poet who happens to write in English, is not an innovator but the heir to a long Japanese tradition.